Joining a Business in Lockdown: How Alex Found His Feet at Consulting Engineers, Dougall Baillie Associates

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. When construction graduate, Alex Clayton, keen to further his professional experience, opted to join long-established, independent consulting engineers Dougall Baillie Associates (DBA), he was given a start date of Monday, 23 March 2020.

As most of us now know, this was the first day of lockdown when, across the country offices locked their doors, furloughed colleagues and worked from home. As a brand-newbie, however, Alex was ineligible to be furloughed, so, never having stepped inside DBA’s office since his interview, he was charged with working at home for his new employer.

“I had enjoyed working for Mason Evans, a geo-environmental consultancy in Glasgow, for two and a half years but thought I should extend my experience so when the chance to join DBA arose, I leapt at the opportunity.

“Moving to a new company is never easy; you are a stranger to its processes and ways of working, so getting to grips with doing things the DBA way was a challenge. Lots of my new work, based on computer aided design (CAD) programmes, was familiar; however,  designing road layouts and drainage systems was not, but I was required, rapidly, to learn lots of new elements to the work.”

DBA Director, Scott Macphail, said: “Alex hasn't yet met any of his colleagues in person, although he has been working full-time for us since lockdown began, undertaking, initially, our formal induction and training courses online.

“We have welcomed him to our online Friday afternoon quiz, with banter and beer, over the past four months, so he’s not now an entirely mysterious figure. We are looking forward to introducing him face-to-face to all his colleagues when we all finally return to our office in East Kilbride.”

Added Alex: “Our Friday afternoon online get-togethers have been a great way of meeting my new team members. Although it has been a little strange, I have been made welcome and have greatly enjoyed sharing in the team spirit which is strong at DBA. “Remote access has been OK but presents its own challenges since it’s not all that easy to learn new programmes when there is no one on the next desk to answer your questions. Let us just say, I cannot wait to get my feet under the table of my new office desk.”